The Vanguard Of American Volunteers In The Fighting Lines And In Humanitarian Service by Edwin Morse

Author:Edwin Morse [Morse, Edwin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782893011
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Lucknow Books
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

XVII — IN THE GREAT BATTLE FOR VERDUN

When in February, 1916, the German army of the Crown Prince began its attack upon the French troops protecting Verdun, the men composing Section 2 of the American Ambulance were hastily transferred from the neighborhood of Pont-à-Mousson to Verdun. In the previous month Section 3 had been moved from its station in Alsace to the Lorraine front, and the men of this section were also at Verdun. The need of more ambulances finally became so great that two additional American sections were sent to the neighborhood of Verdun.

Frank Hoyt Gailor, of Memphis, Tennessee, a member of Section 2, contributed to the Cornhill Magazine for July, 1916, a vivid description of the journey of the section to a village near Verdun, by way of Bar-le-Duc. From this paper as it appears in full in “Friends of France,” a few paragraphs may be quoted:

We started from Bar-le-Duc about noon [on February 22, 1916], and it took us six hours to make forty miles through roads covered with snow, swarming with troops, and all but blocked by convoys of food carts and sections of trucks. Of course, we knew that there was an attack in the neighborhood of Verdun, but we did not know who was making it or how it was going. Then about four o’clock in the short winter twilight we passed two or three regiments of French colonial troops on the march with all their field equipment. I knew who and what they were by the curious Eastern smell that I had always before associated with camels and circuses. They were lined up on each side of the road around their soup kitchens, which were smoking busily, and I had a good look at them as we drove along.

It was the first time I had seen an African army in the field, and though they had had a long march, they were cheerful and in high spirits at the prospect of battle. They were all young, active men, and of all colors and complexions, from blue-eyed blonds to shiny blacks. They all wore khaki and brown shrapnel casques bearing the trumpet insignia of the French sharpshooter. We were greeted with laughter and chaff, for the most part, in an unknown chatter, but now and again someone would say, “Hee, hee, Ambulance Américaine,” or “Yes, Ingliish, good-bye.”...

At about six in the evening we reached our destination some forty miles northeast of Bar-le-Duc. The little village where we stopped had been a railroad centre until the day before, when the Germans started bombarding it. Now the town was evacuated, and the smoking station deserted. The place had ceased to exist, except for a hospital which was established on the southern edge of the town in a lovely old chateau, overlooking the Meuse. We were called up to the hospital as soon as we arrived to take such wounded as could be moved to the nearest available rail-head, which was ten miles away, on the main road, and four miles south of Verdun.

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